What is National Board Certification

This study sought to contribute to the scholarly discourse of understanding how pre-service student teachers experienced evaluation via teacher performance assessments (TPAs). More specifically, this study sought to explore the experiences that pre-service teachers underwent to complete the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA). Through extensive interviews and thematic data analysis, this research discerned what the informants' experiences were. Although informants experienced many benefits while completing their portfolios, three primary areas of struggle emerged from the data. First, informants struggled with interpreting and navigating the edTPA assessment handbook. Second, informants had problems adapting edTPA requirements to their teaching. Third, informants experienced problems with their concept of audience. As a result, the findings reported in this study have numerous implications that would prove beneficial to teacher educators, institutions of teacher training, policymakers, designers of assessments, and future and current educators.